"Little girls read books."
Translation:Les petites filles lisent des livres.
45 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
You are right, without any hint on the context, you could interpret this sentence two ways:
-
Little girls as the plural of A little girl => une petite fille -> de petites filles (des becomes de in front of an adjective)
-
Little girls [all] read books, as a generality => les petites filles (in general) read books (generalities use the definite article)
(As always) What Sitesurf said. We had a lengthy discussion about the issue a while ago. Maybe you're interested: http://duolingo.com/#!/comment/27813
747
In this case, LES petites filles wouldn't be "THE little girls"? Shouldn't be instead "DES petites filles" for "Little girls"?
The definite plural article can also be used to refer to groups in a general sense. See here for more details: http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa082401.htm
If you follow the links already posted to this discussion (e.g. this one http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa082401.htm ) you can easily check that there is nothing wrong with duo's translation.
"les livres" = "the books" = specific books (the ones we gave them, for ex)
"les petites filles lisent des livres" is the plural of "les petites filles lisent un livre " = some books = more than one book.
Remember that "un/une" have a plural form: "des", whereas the English indefinite article "a" does not have a plural form.
Most adjectives are placed after the noun. Others are usually placed in front of them (most notably, the BAGS group: beauty, age, good and bad, size) . And a few can be placed either way. In that case, the meaning often changes depending on where you place it. See here for more details: http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/adjectives_4.htm